Those Sane & Happy Repubs: View from a Happy, Healthy 'Hindrocket'
By Lee Russ
Sunday, December 02, 2007 at 09:33 PM
John Hinderaker runs the Powerline blog, and adopts the name "Hindrocket." And he has news for you and me and all those of us who are Democrats or liberals (he doesn't seem to see any difference): we're probably not as sane, healthy, and happy as he and his fellow conservatives are, which is why "if you're a Republican, the message is mixed: you're probably happier and healthier than your Democratic neighbors, but you're also less likely to be passionate about imposing your political views on others."
From his recent post titled "Republicans: Party of the Mentally Healthy."Gallup reports that, to a remarkable degree, Republicans are more likely than other Americans to say that their own mental health is excellent. Democrats are more likely than others to say that their mental health is fair or poor.Boy, that's intriguing. So lets take a brief look at this novel hypothesis. First, there's the basic issue of Gallup's numbers. Big surprise--according to his own chart, the numbers really don't differ a whole lot between the groups:...
Republicans in all demographic categories report better mental health than Independents, and much better mental health than Democrats.
No one who frequents political sites on the internet will be surprised by these data. More broadly, though, Gallup's results are consistent with other surveys that have shown that Republicans (conservatives) are happier than Democrats (liberals). It is not surprising that happy people are more likely to report good or excellent mental health, and it is fair to say that liberalism is often a response to unhappiness.
...
So if you're a Republican, the message is mixed: you're probably happier and healthier than your Democratic neighbors, but you're also less likely to be passionate about imposing your political views on others.
- Among Democrats, 38% rate their mental health Excellent, 46% Good, 16% Fair/Poor; 84% say either excellent or good.
- Among Independents, 43% rate their mental health Excellent, 40% Good, 17% Fair/Poor; 83% say either excellent or good.
- Among Republicans, 58% rate their mental health Excellent, 35% Good, 8% Fair/Poor; 93% say either excellent or good.
As for happy and healthy.........According to Wikipedia, Mr. Hinderaker is a fellow at the Claremont Institute. One example of the happy and healthy mindset of Claremont, from its web site:
The phenomenon of school violence stems predictably from the moral vacuum wrought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other anti-religionists of the Madalyn Murray O'Hair variety. What did they expect to happen when they pushed America down the slippery slope of eradicating Judeo-Christian expression from the public square?Hinderaker is also the happy & healthy individual who penned the following e-mail about the Jeff Gannon affair to a fellow blogger:
You dumb shit, he didn't get access using a fake name, he used his real name. You lefties' concern for White House security is really touching, but you know what, you stupid asshole, I think the Secret Service has it covered. Go crawl back into your hole, you stupid left-wing shithead. And don't bother us anymore. You have to have an IQ over 50 to correspond with us. You don't qualify, you stupid shit.His explanation? He'd just read a bunch of e-mails to him that were profane and vulgar, and snapped, sending equally profane and vulgar e-mails to the authors of the last couple of e-mails he'd read. But he admitted that the folks who got vulgar/profane material from him were not necessarily the people who'd sent vulgar/profane material to him. Sort of like invading Iraq to send a message to those dirty bastards who flew planes into the WTC, I guess.
Then, of course, there's the whole idea that people who think they are sane must really be sane. As Ambrose Bierce said: "The fact is, that of your own sanity you have no evidence that's any better than some lunatic who thinks he's Ulysses S. Grant or Jesus H. Christ. I certainly have no evidence of mine. For all I know you don't exist. Everything around me may be fictions of my disordered imagination."
Not to mention the idea that sanity equals happiness. Mark Twain, for example, didn't think so when he said “Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.”
Not to mention the idea that these stats are supposed to mean that the sane and happy party has for years been represented by folks like Coulter, Delay, Boehner, Hannity, O'Reilly, Savage, Ney, Cunningham, Blunt, Rove, Cheney, and on and on and on and on.
So I ask you, who ya gonna believe, some guy who voluntarily calls himself "Hindrocket", or Ambrose Bierce and Mark Twain?
Comments
If we then query old John Dean, we then discover that those happy, sane and erstwhile sappy Rethugs all suffer from acute authoritarianism. In other words, you're happy as a clam, because somebody else does all your worrying for you, you've no opinion of your own outside of Faux/Slimeball/O'really et al, and you'll vote as we effing TELL YOU TO.
As Ian Anderson so well put it, "to be thick...as a brick."
Of course, the rest of us dance madly, wondering if our sanity will prevail, wondering if, what else, then, but then, well, damn and so on. Worry, worry and worry. Worry about how to pay all these bills, but, dam Sam, I ain't no rich white Rethug, am I?
Meaning, we poor and broke cannot afford those good drugs....
"Everyone's crazy but me and thee and quite frankly I worry about thee"
~Anonymous
Gallup reports that, to a remarkable degree, Republicans are more likely than other Americans to say that their own mental health is excellent. Democrats are more likely than others to say that their mental health is fair or poor.
Here's the thing about the difference between crazy people and sane people. If you tell a sane person he's crazy they'll likely underplay it or shrug it off. If you tell a crazy person he's crazy they will deny with so much foamy mouthed vehemence that their ill mental health become obvious from across the street. Spud already dealt with this story over at the Retort where this adage was proven w/o a doubt.
Are Rethugs saner/happier than Dems on the whole?
Prolly, ...Ignorance, it is famously sed, is Bliss.
Happiest looking fella Spud ever saw was a Moonie. If you asked him he'd say he was in perfect mental health too. Hardly convincing evidence, wouldn't you say? Mike Huckaberry thinks he's sane. Then again he also thinks the earth is 6,000 years old. There's that to consider too!
Be Well.
Meaning, we poor and broke cannot afford those good drugs....
Spuds from BC. Cheap like Borscht!
Be Well.
Spud, oh, wise and powerful: Thou referest to Catch 22..if one deems one sane, then one is obviously not firing on all nine. If one questions one's marbles, person should be reasonably somewhat legit.
And "normal" as far as I'm concerned? In a cosmos ruled exclusively by a force called entropy, that, comrade, is a joke and then some.
I just find it ticklish to the funny bone that those with all the loot can call themselves sane. Unfortunately, I have had the sad experience of having had to work for not one, but about a half dozen honest-to-Dow millionaires. Every one, in my take, about as sane as any guest villian starring on Batman, and yes, with about the same moral fibre, ie, as in effing zero.
But, can we wax on morality as part of being sane? The mind boggles. Let's just put it down to more self-delusion and walk away slowly, maybe the thing will go away, eh?